Sherman’s mother would always offer us cookies and hot chocolate when we were playing hockey on the street or throwing snowballs at each other. His dad drove a Pontiac and worked nearby at the Toronto Dominion Bank. I heard that Sherman had disappeared into a Hassidic community, although when I knew him he was fully assimilated Canadian with even less attachment to religion than me.  So what ever happened to Sherman?

A decade ago, a firm hired me to work in Toronto. Monthly for about 18 months, I took that very long Tel Aviv-Toronto flight, and stayed the weekend before returning home. I learnt that Shari, like so many other Montrealers, had moved to Toronto. Shari was born in New York and had moved to Montreal as a kid-but she still saw herself as American. Pleasant, happy with a great sense of humour, I looked forward to reconnecting. I called her one Saturday afternoon and she told me that “I have erased Montreal from my life; don’t call me again”. She hung up. What ever happened to Shari?

I really, really liked Gary’s mother. She also was a New Yorker, who had married a Montreal boy, Gary’s Dad. Gary’s mother was warm, loving, kind and very good to me. Gary was a very close friend. He was good in PE (I was not) and I was good in languages and history. Naturally, we helped each other. My very first date was with Gary’s cousin Judy when she was up in Montreal on a visit. Judy’s dad (Gary’s mother’s brother) was a cab driver in NYC! Judy sent me love letters signed “love, Judy”. I was too shy to kiss her on our first date. How silly of me-but I was only 15. Gary  disappeared off the map. I have looked for him everywhere. Where are you, Gary? What the hell happened to you?

Capone (Stephen) was my classmate and his sister Diane was in my sister’s class. His father was Montreal born and his mom was born in Alabama and had a very strong accent. Steven dressed very well and often, I asked my Dad to get me “the same thing that Stephen is wearing”. Capone was what people today would call “cool”, but perhaps “cool” no longer means anything. After all, I am 73 years old on Nov 4. One summer, I learnt that Capone and I were to be going to the same summer camp. I was worried because Capone was popular at that camp, and I was new. Luckily, I was also popular, and Capone and I got on really well. Capone’s sister drowned in a horrible accident. I lost all contact with him, and all my searches have found nothing about his whereabouts. Capone, where the fu-k are you?

In 1969, I returned to Israel where my paternal family have been living since 1917. I did not lose all my friends. Sam, George, Arlene, Norman, Sue; we are all still in contact. I even spoke to Millie a few years ago.

But for heaven sakes-Sherman, Gary, Shari, Capone-where are you?

The treatment for depression used to be dipping the afflicted in ice water. Not that it helped very much; albeit in its time, it was a state of the art treatment.

In the Roman empire, piles were treated with onions. Of course that treatment became obsolete, even before Preparation H became available.

Hernia holders (someone to hold your hernia inside) were common; they too became obsolete with hernia belts. All treatments of cataracts (which I will not go into) caused blindness, but they were used for many years. But no longer.

Organizations are presently suffering from a lack of loyalty, resulting in high levels of turn-over. The turn over is not as high as some alarmists make it up to be (in order to make money), but it is still high. Furthermore, it has become very difficult to recruit new people.

Yet the ‘treatments’ being used are reminiscent of the onions, ice, hernia holders and hot coals on the cataract-way out of step with what the clients need.

Engagement plans, a fun environment, unlimited vacations and wow-wowism are not an appropriate elixir for the present turbulence in the job market.

The possible solutions may stem from a new way of looking at the crisis.

Here are 3 examples, all real.

Syd’s Steak House in had a 90% monthly turnover of stewards(dishwashers). As a result, all 7 branches were operating at 30% capacity. Syd’s now uses paper plates and plastic cutlery.

Alfredo’s Industrial Laundry in Afula Israel had 29 of it 50 staff resign after covid. Every morning at 7 AM, a bus now crosses the international border at Bein Sean bussing in 30 Pakistani workers from Jordan, who are now exempt for all border checks as long as they carry their magnetic cards.

It takes 5 years to become an expert program manager this cyber security plant. Experts have good relationships with the defense ministry and 4 key clients, as well as background in telecommunications , programming and system integration. 4 of 10 program managers quit since covid with devastating results. After failed exit interviews did not teach the organization anything useful, a structural change was put in place. Relationship management has now been separated from the role of Program Manager. Each relationship manager now has a second driver.

The response to the present crisis needs to be structural and strategic.

Stop using onions and ice.

You cannot make much sense of this post if you do not know what an opium den was. Put in today’s terms, it was a recreational establishment where people smoked opium, the most addictive of drugs at that time that  few professionals warned of its dangers. The opium dens devastated China’s population. 

Recently I myself have noticed dens all around me. Mobile phone dens; not opium dens. It does not matter where I am: on trains; in meetings; in the restaurant; in the movie theatre; in concerts; in lectures. Everywhere. There is a sickening stench of addiction.

Amir was reviewing the soaring prices that vendors were now quoting,some justified but many unjustified. The cost of doing business was threatening their profitability existentially. As Amir spoke, Bob was texting his wife. Sima was texting her new girlfriend. Fatima was watching a new you-tuber from Lebanon; Shuki was reading the news. Freddy had turned his phone face down but kept checking it. Yisrael had to leave the room because his son called him from the pool that he had a stomach ache. Tina left the room because her daughter had nausea. Ilan learnt that his new car would be available in two weeks.

The level of discussion after Amir spoke was as shallow as piss on a plater. I was asked by Amir what I had noticed during the meeting, and I said that “people were fucking around on their phones and not listening”.

Amir told me “not to be too old-fashioned”. Sima told me not to be vulgar, and mentioned that I always spoke in the masculine form, which is “correct Hebrew but not politically correct Hebrew”. Fatima was still watching the You Tuber.

The week after I addressed this team about opium dens-with slides and with pictures.They listened and decided to leave their phones outside the room.

And no, it is not the way to do business. It is not that I am old fashioned. It is a severe addiction, with lots of money driving the loss of cognitive and emotional abilties downhill into a pit of disrepair. 

In 1998, DWD came out with a product that conquered the market. Almost every police department, internal security ministry, and sleuth agency was quick to purchase the product as well as  pay the large monthly service fee. In 1998, DWD’s product division had 20 engineers and by 2014, they had 8977, scattered in 6 development sites!

DWD knew that their account management division was weak in Russia, Germany, Australia/NZ and Japan. They had lost HUGE key clients in all four areas, which tarnished  their reputation, albeit not severely. CEO Arthur Laurier told me in 2001: “I want you to focus all your attention on the quality of account management. It’s the most frail part of DWD”.

HR manager Nicole Abd and I worked together to recruit the very best acccount managers we would find. Nicole would recruit them, and I would ensure that they learned to work well with the back office, which was Israeli, French and Dutch. Even when all was going well,the CEO grilled Nicole and me monthly about “what’s going wrong with the key account managers?” Until the bitter end, DWD retained the best of its account managers.

In the meantime, the product division, convinced that their product was “built to last”, recruited hundreds of mediocre engineers to keep their product afloat. Feedback from the field that their product was getting clumsy and too “stand-alone-ish” was ignored. In 2017, in a massive AI-based paradigm shift, DWD lost 60% of their clientelle to a new suite of products developed in Taiwan. The senior engineers in the product division bolted and the next generation of managers were B grade at most. By 2022, DWD’s products were uninstalled everywhere except for Cuba, RSA and Romania.

The perception of what was “frail” and what a major pillar of success had focused all the attention on the wrong place. What is strong today is weak tomorrow, and if you work on your weakness with vigour, they won’t remain your weaknesses for long.

So always question what issues your client asks you to ignore.

Nadia, a corporate lawyer, comes to work overdressed, as do many of her Russian-born colleages. Even the blazing heat of the summer, Nadia is “putting on the ritz”. She is not “shchuna”, because she is not from the shchuna, even if she is.

Shchuna can mean neighbourhood, but more often refers to the long blocks of two to four storey long blocks of housing with several entrances, often with no elevator, small apartments and functional mailboxes yet in a poor state of repair.

When Nadia’s parents came to Israel, she  lived in a shchuna (‘D’ in Beer Sheva) , but she is not shchuna. Not one bit. She has a very strong Russian accent, & perfect Hebrew grammar. She speaks to her kids in Russian, and they answer in Hebrew.

Rafi calls me “bro”. He is 27; I am 72. Rafi mixes up (almost purposely) masculine and feminine pronouns and numbers, although he is very, very well educated; his Hebrew is sloppy, masking his intelligence. He is almost uncomfortable in his milieu as a senior programmer in the cyber start-up where he works. Most of the  people  he worked with served in a elite group but Rafi served in the infantry. He has two visible tatoes. He wears two rings. All his peers admire him, “although he is a bit shchuna”. His mother was born in Romania, survived the camps; his father fled Algeria.

Sima works in Finance as an economist is the revenue-projection team. She uses the term “metuka sheli” (loosely translated as “sugar”) when speaking to her females colleages. Or “hamudi” (loosely translated as Cutey) when speaking to males. Her dressing is not provocative, but is certainly not conservative. The best way to describe her atire is loud. She befriends almost everyone, except her bosses towards whom she shows respect and hidden contempt. She could be promoted if she tried but ‘being in management is not in my league’. Sima comes from Dimona, a desert town. Her parents’  are both Dimona born and all 4 grandparents came different places: Morocco, Tunis, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Sima describes herself as shchuna, and is proud of it. But she isn’t. 

Hava was born in Israel and returned here at the age 15 after her parents returned from teaching at Columbia. She retains a slight American accent, especially with the letters R and L. She is a political activist in her spare time, deeply involved in trying to improve civil rights of illegal immigrants to Tel Aviv. She has a PhD in Philosophy. She does not have a pot to piss in, although she has a well paying job in City Hall. She wears jeans and a T shirt to work every day. She sprinkles her Hebrew with English and often gets confused between masculine and feminine grammar use. There is nothing shchuna about Hava. But Hava would be so glad to be seen as a bit ‘shchuna’. It would make her feel at home.

Got it? 

Arlene and Alan are both consulting the CEO. Arlene focuses on interfaces between silos and Alan on developing flexibility during crisis. The CEO is highly manipulative and gives ambiguous messages to his team; within 4 months, the CEO has Alan and Arlene working at cross-purposes. They have been infected.

Paco is an all-powerful CFO in a company struggling both to improve its product and to cut costs in order to be more attractive to 3 potential buyers. Paco’s boss, the CEO, hires a consultant to improve rapid development processes and innovation. Paco owns Supply Chain/Purchasing; instead of hiring one consultant to do the job, two cheaper consultants are hired: one “innovation coach” and a “rapid development process guru”. Infected.

A fast-growing company sets highly aggressive unachievable goals. Each employee has the work load of three people. Most of the staff are new immigrants struggling to get a green card. Staff works around the clock to put out fires on customer sites. Larry has been hired to help staff “better align their priorities”. After two months, Larry has 7 projects; he has lost focus and the CEO has no time to meet with him. When the company’s revenue slip due to the exchange rate of the Euro, Larry is axed. He had been infected-on-arrival.

A government agency hires a consultant to “update the C level with state of the art knowledge” on management theory and practice. Caught up in a disastrous power struggle between the HR SVP of 25 years tenure and the new Scientific Management SVP, the consultant has written 12 proposals in the last two months and has yet to start work. Infected.

Yes, OD consultants can facilitate change. But they can also become infected by the client during their professional “struggle” and easily become part of the problem.

Some organizations carry some very nasty diseases, which are infectious upon contact.

Prophylactic measures include supervision, periodic project reviews at the CEO level, and peer critique of work.

Were this a commercial issue, I would not be address it here in my blog. Billing for work cancelled or delayed has very little to do with business. It has little impact on a consultant’s revenue. It is however a major component of trust, fairness and mutual respect.

I have put together my view on billing for work that was cancelled or delayed into a few statements of principle that have served me well in the 47 years that I have been an OD consultant.

• If the client himself does not sign a contract with me, but rather I need to negotiate my professional service with Purchasing or Supply Chain, I will always insist that all hours cancelled or delayed be paid in full for all work cancelled/delayed 4 days in advance. This is a matter of principle. The purchasing agent will maximize the clients’ commercial interests; I will maximalize mine.
• But let’s assume that I negotiate directly with the client. In the initial stages my work, I will not charge for work cancelled or delayed. My initial contract will only cover 2-3 months, usually “stage one” or whatever. During this time, I will document the revenue lost due to cancellations and delays. After the initial 2-3 months, I will talk with the client about what has happened. I will ask the client what he plans to do, either to reimburse me, take corrective action, both or tell me that “you should have factored that into your initial costs”. Then I will adjust my terms  of the seond stage.
• When I travel abroad to work, the client will be billed for all work that is/was planned after I have taken off. There are no exceptions to this.
• Let’s say a meeting was supposed to start at 14.00 and starts at 14.20. If the meeting goes on for one hour, ie until 15.20, I bill for one hour and twenty minutes. If the meeting lasts till 15.00, the client is billed for one hour.
• All work cancelled the same day depends on the amount of time that I have been working with the client. Veteran clients are somewhat accommodated; new clients pay full fare. I do not close my eyes when clients cancel willy nilly on the day of my work. It may say something is very wrong with the relationship.
• As far as my being delayed or cancelling work, I am always at the client site 30 minutes early. I never cancel unless ill.
• Delays due to illness or security threats are never billed.

As relationships develop the quality of the relationship with the client replaces the contract, and financial damage due to delays and cancellations are solved more naturally in the framework of an ongoing mutually beneficial relationship.

Before I get beaten up, I’d better clarify that I have worked with hybrid teams since they existed. Multi-time zone teams, in situ and at home, Japanese and Israeli; Australians and Singaporeans; Chinese and a CBC (Canadian born Chinese)  founded companies in Vancouver-I’ve been everywhere.

Different people have different genetic weaknesses; so do different breeds of dogs. My senior dog George, for example, suffers from epilepsy. Most poodles do. His hind legs ain’t so good. That is common for a 14 year old dog. It is built into his genetic code. Various types of teams also have certain special types of weaknesses.

In this brief post, I want to share the unique types of troubles facing hybrid teams, with a special emphasis on teams where some people are in an office and others are working from home.

1. The people in the actual meeting room will generally  be more involved than those at home.
   
2. Those at home will be more distracted and tend to play around with their mobile and and lose track of what is going on.
3. There may be less active discussion about contentious  issues in hybrid teams, but there may be less committment to decisons made. Often feigned commitment initially goes unnoticed in hybrid teams.
4. Trust building capabilties is THE critical skill set for members of a hybrid teams. Some people just do not have that skill, and they should be shut off from participating unless they can adapt or be trained. Some people cannot adapt well; examples includes people who cut other people off, never shut up and who have very poor listening skills.
5. Hidden agendas in multi-national teams abound. They are the cancer of this form of organizing. The most common hidden agenda is a desire to control your own destiny. The ‘other’ team causes anxiety because of the built in dependence.
6. The rarest commodity in a multinational team is trust. It is rarer than a face mask in a Texas mall. As the link illustrates, trust even means different things to different cultures.
7. People who have never met can work very well together. Yet when they meet, their interaction will change, probably for the better. So whatever the cost or circumstance, organizations should always, always, encourage f2f meetings. It is not old-fashioned. It is effective.

That  home of mine on Rehov (street) Shemaryahu near the Mandelbaum Gate which used to separate old from new Jerusalem was probably the closest I have ever come to, say, living in Baghdad or Teheran.  Shemaryau was actually an alley, not a street. And that home was actually sort of a room and a half, or even less. It was freezing cold all winter;  a kerosene cart, pulled by a horse, would pass by once every two days. Yael or I would run up and fill up a jerrycan of “solar” for our “fireside”. No, of course we did not have an actual fireside-the old kerosene heaters which often billowed smoke were called “firesides.” It took about 5 matches to lite the wick. And about ten minutes before the heater started to heat.

MANDELBAUM GATE-from wikicommons

Another feature of the Shmaryahu area was the old man who came by everyday yelling “alteh zachen”-which means “old things” or used items in Yiddish. The old man was an Arab-and he did speak some Yiddish, which I certainly don’t. Nor did Yael. She was, and still is, Yemenite.

Hisachon 2/2/2 was a different story all together. Located near the ultra-religious area of Beit vaGan in Jerusalem, Hisachon 2/2/2 was an old fashioned Soviet-like public housing, with each apartment having 3 very small rooms, broken mailboxes at the entrance and an unkempt public domain at the entrance. Unkempt, but clean. Each of the three“blocks” of Hisachon had 4 entrances. I was entrance 2. 2^nd floor. Apartment 2. Hence  Hisachon 2/2/2. Hisachon by the way means “savings”. Appropriate, as you can see from the building in the forefront.

Soviet style public housing-Shikun hahisachon 2-from wikicommons

I shared that apartment in Hisachon with another soldier, Dany, who was born in Chile. We agreed on everything; the apartment needs to be clean; close the door when there are “guests”. Dany was to become an OD consultant as well. The best part of sharing an apartment with him was the number of books he read. Everything and anything I read, Dany had read before me. I lost all contact with him; he disappeared off the face of the earth. When Dany woke up, I could hear him whistling in the shower. He whistled well but one of his girlfriends smoked.

Stern 12 in Kiryat Yovel, Jerusalem was a royal pain in the ass. The 18 bus left me a 20 minute walk from the apartment, and in the extreme heat, that was no fun. But the 4 room apartment I shared had some interesting characters. Hans was a German student studying Yiddish literature at the Hebrew University. He spoke Hebrew with strongest German accent I ever encountered. Ilan came from an Israeli collective settlement and was almost never there, since he needed to work to finance his studies. And there was a newly married couple; she was American and he was Israeli. They hogged the kitchen and if you ask me, their marriage did not last. When I lived in Stern, I tried to learn Arabic. I spent hours up on the roof of Stern 12 with a small tape listening to Arabic. “Bas isma-wa-id vistarachah” “Just listen and answer in the break”. Yes-it was possible to sit on roof-and I loved to do so.

I had more apartments/rented rooms in Jerusalem. On Rehov Naftali in Baqa with Hadassah which is too painful to write about; in the Bucharim Quarter with a lady flatmate whose name I do not remember, and in Bayit va Gan.

Bucharin Quarter from Wiki

Now Jerusalem is an hour and a half drive from where I live, and thousands of years in the past.

Joe was supposed to report that the wiring in Station B had been fixed. However, Joe got a call from his wife and forgot to do so. As a result, Station B remained closed for one extra hour, causing a 5000 Euro loss.

Joe’s boss, Garth, told Joe that he had nothing to worry about. Garth sent out a mail saying that “I ordered that Joe wait an hour after the repair to be absolutely sure that there would be no need to close Station B again”.  Garth had backed Joe. 

Ed had far less luck. He showed up to work 20 minutes late, delaying the deployment of new equipment. Ed’s boss, Carmen, castigated Ed in a group Whatsapp for “chronic tardiness”. Carmen had not backed Ed.

Backing is a two edged sword. On one hand, there is an expecation is some cultures for automatic “artiliary cover” for errors and if and when there is an issue to be discussed, dirty linen needs to be washed so that no one else can see. On the other hand, backing can lead to cover up, lying, and constant blaming between groups.

I want here to relate to the cultural expectations around backing. In middle eastern, Asian and African societies, there is an expectation of benevolence from the superior which includes “backing as default”, and in return for that benevolence, there is obediance. In other societies, an expectation for transparency overrides the expecatiotion of “cover fire”, and thus, backing is often less automatic and not as being the default behaviour expected from managers.

In global organizations, backing is more complex. “Let’s take it offline” is a sign of backing, albeit obtuse. “Let me take care of it with HQ” is also a sign of backing. However, “Ned and Wu, I do not plan to babysit this issue, figure out how to deal with it on your own” is backing for Ned, who feels like he is being treated like an adult, and a slap in the face for Wu, who wanted the boss to step in and put Ned in his place, which Wu feels is not Wu’s job.

Here are a few guidelines I have developed for managers pondering what type of backing to provide?

1) Do I want to be consistent, or deal case by case?

2) Do I want to mold my employee’s expectations, or adapt myself to how s/he has been brought up and educated?

3) What behaviour will ensure that I myself am never surprised or lied to?

4) How can I give backing without concealing, and how can I be matter-of-fact without letting down my people?

And a short story to end. I was in Asia in a country that I certainly could not use my Israeli passport to get in. Mr T, the country manager, always backed his local people from the wrath of the Dutch based HQ when there was a policy infringement. I was working with Mr T about how he is (negatively) perceived in HQ. T was certain that if he lessened the backing he gave his people, “I will lose both HQ and my employees. Allon Sir, don’t force me into a lose-lose sitatuation”.

One more interesting insight for those interested in “backing” in China. The CCP (Mao in particular) was known for sending the people closest to him for re-education. Over time, it became clear that he backed almost one. However, when reads Vogel’s  biography of Deng, it is clear that Deng got very special conditions when he was send for re-education in the countryside (as a mechanic.) Btw, I am aware that this paragraph interests almost no one :).